Mike Wittmer

what the what?

Several of the women in my neighborhood (ladies is a bit too strong) attended a party last night that celebrated a distinctive male body part (the one responsible for procreation). One of them baked a cake in the shape of this item and called my wife to come over and view it. She declined, saying that while she wasn’t offended, that really wasn’t her thing.

Has anyone else heard of similar parties? Do you know of other middle-aged married women who behave like junior-high boys? Is this a one-off event or a sign of decline in our culture?

In unrelated news, where can I find a news story on Michael Jackson? So much for the revolution in Iran.

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13 responses to “what the what?”

  1. Jonathan Shelley

    Mike:

    San Diego, November 2007, ETS National Convention – remember the Passion Party convention that was happening at the same location? Parties like this are the new sign of feminist liberation and sexual empowerment. Sex is not a gift of God to celebrate the love between a man and a woman, marking a special bond between husband and wife that has been blessed by God and set aside as sacred. Nein! Sex is a tool to be leveraged in the battle of the sexes as a means to express independence and exercise control over another person. Through these parties, women are breaking free of the patriarchal stereotypes that have oppressed them for centuries and reclaiming their role as feminine dieties over against the phallo-centric Judeo-Christian ethic of subjugation. In the Sixties and Seventies, you burned your bra. In the Eighties and Nineties, you shattered the glass ceiling. In the Twenty-first century, you have a [male genitalia] party.

  2. Rev. Z. Bartels

    Thanks for–once again–confirming the truth of the doctrine of total depravity. So these ladies are not only totally crass but also clueless… I’ve met your wife a few times (a class act) and I can’t imagine anyone thinking she’d find such a thing humorous.

  3. Jonathan Shelley

    Zach, this isn’t depravity – it’s culture, and we should engage it!

  4. Rev. Z. Bartels

    Zach, this isn’t depravity – it’s culture, and we should engage it!

    John, what’s sad is that there are “pastors” who would say that without the sarcasm.

    Reminds me of this: http://www.spurgeon.org/images/pyromaniac/TeamPyro/e-s_060.jpg

  5. Pam Elmore

    I had heard of this type of thing for bachelorette parties. Evidently there’s a whole line of stuff produced for such celebrations.

    I think Jonathan has it right. For decades, there’s been a developing attitude of “what’s good for the gander is good for the goose” — this is the latest expression of it.

  6. Linda Fisher

    Several years ago I was asked to sing “We are standing on holy ground” in a friend’s wedding. Two nights before the wedding I attended the bachelorette party thrown by her two non-Christian sisters, and it was even worse than the party thrown by your neighbors. Sadly, the bride, a lovely Christian, reverted to her “heathen” days, had too much too drink, and let her friends pressure her into embarrassing participation with their “party props”.

    Call me a prude, but I WAS offended. There was no time to speak to the bride about the debacle before the wedding, and it was almost impossible to sing about “Holy Ground” with those images fresh in my mind!

    Leave it to satan to tell us such degrading behavior lead to freedom and equality!

    BTW, I love Don’t Stop Believing! It is the clearest, most fair look at the situation in the church today that I have read.

  7. Amanda

    Wow. I have never heard of anything like that “outside” of a bachelorette-type party. that is just… ridiculous. Boo….

  8. mikewittmer

    Jonathan:

    This is very perceptive analysis. It seems that there is more than just crassness at work here. Good theological/sociological assessment. Now I’m going to mow my lawn in fear!

  9. Adam D. Jones

    Not unusual, at all. Baking cakes in the shape of genitals is considered hysterical to an average middle aged woman. (Who wants to cut into the scrotum? Really?)

    Even the more prudent ladies at church seem to have something dirty going on the night before the wedding. Usually it is something low-key – like dirty joke themed gifts – and they see it as harmless. It’s an interesting trend.

  10. mike

    Linda:

    I share your grief at singing “Holy Ground” to such “ladies.” This seems to be the definition of irony.

  11. Rev. Z. Bartels

    If a couple I was scheduled to marry did this and I learned of it, I would be inclined not to go through with the ceremony. At the very least, we would enter “emergency pre-marital counseling session” territory.

  12. Prodigal Daughter

    I’m slightly concerned at this post and all the comments that follow. Please don’t misunderstand me–I agree with everything. Perhaps it’s the lack of couching this topic within the grander conversation about “the battle of the sexes” that bothers me. Perhaps because of the lack of this context, I am jumping to conclusions that none of you would hold to.

    I guess what concerns me is that without touching on the larger conversation, I’m led to believe (by reading this post and the following comments) that the culture is not in decline when men in our culture enjoy the debauchery in a wild bachelor party, but when women (understandably though not justifiably) react to it with their own parties, our culture IS in decline. Is it “normal and expected” for men to behave this way and not women? I don’t get it. I don’t think wild bachelor parties are any more virtuous than wild bachelorette parties. I’m quite sure you all don’t think that either, but one wouldn’t really know.

    Wouldn’t an argument for an appropriate celebration of sex include a criticism of the inappropriate actions/reactions in our culture on the parts of both men AND women? Perhaps this is a given, but without implicit statement, I think the criticisms of women come across as a misogynistic point of view, which doesn’t help the “conversation” between feminists (which I’m not) and those have differing opinions.

    Shouldn’t the conversation be more constructive and lean towards discussing how both men and women can treat sex with dignity and honor (not necessarily prudishness) and expose how both are failing to do so?

  13. mikewittmer

    Prodigal Daughter:

    I’m sure that, as you say, everyone who posted would be as adamantly opposed to the debauchery that occurs with males as with females. I don’t think that any of us intended to single out women, it was simply limited to that because that was the experience that I encountered. And it is noteworthy, because women have typically behaved better when it comes to sexuality, and when they are now behaving like junion high boys, just imagine what the men are doing.

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